Henderson-McDowell spat enlivens A's loss

Edvins Beitiks, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, September 3, 1995

NEW YORK - On a day when A's bats didn't make a sound, Rickey Henderson and Jack McDowell had plenty to say.

After Henderson was called out on strikes to start the sixth inning, he took exception to what the Yankees' McDowell said from the mound. McDowell took exception to what Henderson was saying, and both benches emptied.

Held back by his teammates, Henderson pointed to McDowell and yelled, "I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna get your ass!" and McDowell yelled back, "You're gone! Get out of here! You're gone!"

Both sides milled around for awhile, then returned to their dugouts to finish the game, a mild, almost easy 5-0 Yankees victory. McDowell and Bob Wickman held the A's to two hits in the Yankees' fifth straight win.

The loss, the second for the A's after a sweep of Baltimore in Camden Yards, left Oakland at 58-62 and a game farther back in the wild-card stampede, while the Yanks gained ground.

The A's tried to use the boost they got from the Henderson-McDowell face-off to break the stranglehold McDowell had on them. But the right-hander (12-10) gave them only two singles in eight innings and Oakland was shut out for the first time since July 28.

The score was 0-0 and each team had managed only one hit when Henderson and McDowell went at it. "That kind of thing, it's real important to feed off that," said Mike Bordick, who had one of the A's two hits. "It got some guys pumped up, but we just couldn't take advantage of the situation."

For the first five innings McDowell and Steve Wojciechowski weren't giving any ground, Wojciechowski getting touched for a third-inning single while McDowell gave up a fourth-inning hit to Stan Javier. Then came the almost-fight.

"Maybe he was upset because, on that walk I got before, I said on the way to first, "I should've been on base a long time ago' - you know, talking about the calls he was getting."

McDowell said, "That's part of Henderson's game. . . . On every strike he's going to turn around to the umpire and say something to complain. That's what he does."

Asked what he said to Henderson, McDowell shrugged and replied, "I probably said something about, "The pitch is right there!" '

Yankees manager Buck Showalter said trouble between Henderson and McDowell "goes back a little ways," but McDowell said, "It's just one of those things. I don't have any problem with him.

"I kind of find myself in situations like this more than I'd like to - I let my emotions get to running," added McDowell, who made news earlier this summer for flipping off Yankees fans after a bad outing.

The whole thing was weird, said Ruben Sierra, who came out late from the Yankees dugout to try and break things up as his ex-teammates and new teammates waltzed around.

"Rickey gets angry sometimes, you know," said Sierra,

"but not to fight people."

After the sixth-inning shout-down, Henderson stood on the top step of the visitors' dugout, staring at the mound, trying to put the mojo on McDowell, while the crowd of 22,552 chanted "Rick-ey! Rick-ey!"

"I just wanted him to know, "I got my eyes on you,' " Henderson said. "I wanted him to know I got one more time at you, and you better be ready."

Carlos Reyes, who relieved Wojciechowski in the sixth, when the rookie was down, 1-0, gave up four singles in the seventh to boost New York's lead to 4-0. The crowd turned its attention to the next Henderson-McDowell confrontation, which came in the eighth.

With Bordick on second and one out, the fans chanted

"Rick-ey!" while Henderson ran the count to 3-2, smiling and staring and slapping the barrel of his bat. He struck out with a low swing, but the ball got away from catcher Mike Stanley and Henderson made it to first to stare at McDowell some more.

It was a moral victory, but the A's would have preferred a victory, period. And that one went to Jack McDowell.&lt;